GOING TO THE MOVIES

Going to the movies: 1. When I was a kid, we would occasionally go to the drive in movies. If Dad asked Mom if she wanted to go the movies, we paid instant attention. If she said, “Oh, I don't care.” That meant we were going! We would all pile into what ever station wagon that was being driven. We wore pyjamas. There was no food or drink taken along. We would park in one of the inclined spots. Dad would put the speaker in the window. The drive in at the time had a playground. Can we go play? NO! The drive in had a concession stand. Can we go? NO! The first movie I remember going to see was King Kong. Then we went to see The Long Grey Line. The first inside movie house I ever went to was the one in downtown Emmett. Grandma Berglund had drooped us off to go see The Wizard of Oz. At the point where the witch is riding her broom writing “Surrender Dorothy”, my brother and I looked at each other and exclaimed, “I'm scare!” “Me, too!” We scurried out of the theater and wandered around downtown until we saw Grandma Berglund. She was upset that we had left the movie early. We went to lots of afternoon movies, we would beg Dad for pocket change and go. That was downtime for them. The theater had a concession stand but we never had enough to purchase anything. I was particularly fascinated by the Radar Range hot dogs. It was just hot dogs rotating on a rotisserie and they looked wonderful. The theater had loge seating where teenagers liked to occupy in order to make out. In the mid seventies I took Charlie there for a donate-a-can cartoon fest. We sat in the loge with what felt like a hundred kids. I could barely see the screen. But I was not going to let Charlie get trampled in that mass of kids. I was afraid the place would collapse. The only other time that I went to that theater was in the mid sixties. I had come home for Christmas. I went there with a high school girlfriend and we shivered and watched Dr. Zhivago. Yikes! When I first moved to California, I stayed with my cousin and his wife for a few months. One evening Carl said that we were going to the Petaluma Drive in for an EIGHT HOUR Beach Blanket Bingo extravaganza. I sat in the backseat of the 1965 Mustang. Very hard seat. Also the fog rolled in, he fog rolled out. In the late sixties, I went to a drive in movie with Judy Jones in West Virginia. The top of the mountain was shaved off and the place was segregated. While working at Fairchild, I went with my first roommate to go see both Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. A date once took me to go see ”2001 a Space Odyssey”. He fell asleep. The hippies all got up and waltzed when they played the Blue Danube. I once drove to the city to see of movie all by myself. There was a very long line. I cannot remember the title but it had hippies and war protesters and it was fairly humorous. When I was married, first husband and I went to see Patton on our honeymoon. It knew it was going to be an Oscar winner just from the music alone. We went with friends to see In Cold Blood purely by accident It was a very good film. We also went to see The Godfather. I really liked that one. Also, another pair of friends went with us to go to a little place called The Screening Room. It was a porn theater. Seating was sparse, we all sat together in the first row. We had a tremendous view of a 12 foot tall pudenda. Unshaven. Most of the scenarios involved naked women masturbating. There were no men doing so. Also there was an advertisement looking for actors for these movies paying fifty dollars an hour. Um okay. Did not go back, no plot. The summer that Charlie was born, I talked Mom and Dad into letting my sisters stay with me. Mike took us to a drive in, I only remember that it was somewhere in Marin County. I am fairly certain that the property has since been developed in very spendy housing. In the late seventies I went with family to go see Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And of course sprinkled in here were Star Wars. I only wanted to live long enough to see the trilogy. When the long awaited Star Trek came out, I took Charlie to go see it. During the start there was a very long shot of the approach to the Enterprise. Charlie asked me, “Is this the exciting part, Mom?” Uh not quite. One summer I took Charlie to the drive in movie in Boise to see Star Wars. We were interrupted by a train going by fairly often. Pretty sure that drive in no longer exists. One good thing that came out of Covid this year was the popularity of drive in movies. Wonderful. I hope they stay after things go back to normal.